1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cleaning apparatus which removes residual toner from a member to be cleaned and feeds the removed toner to a reservoir by means of a toner feeding means.
2. Related Background Art
According to FIG. 3 showing a sectional view of an image forming system which contributes to the background of the present invention, a photosensitive member 1 is uniformly charged by means of a corona charger 2, and, after a light image 3 has been illuminated onto the photosensitive member to form a latent image thereon, the latent image is developed to form a visualized image with toner by means of a developing device 4. Then, the toner T on the photosensitive member 1 is transferred onto a transfer sheet S by means of a corona charger 5 to form an image. After the transferring operation, the residual toner T' remains on the photosensitive member 1 (member to be cleaned); such residual toner is removed from the member to be cleaned by means of a cleaning blade 6 and is stored or returned to a container 7. The recovered toner T' is fed by a toner feeding means 8 comprising a toner feeding plate 8a and elastic members 8b rearwardly of a partition plate 10 to be accumulated into a toner reserving portion 11.
In such a cleaning apparatus, there is a need for storing a large amount of toner in accordance with the improvement in the high speed operation and multi-function and/or the durability of the image forming system. However, in the conventional cleaning apparatus as shown in FIG. 3, there arose a problem that the toner could not occupy an upper space in the toner reserving portion 11, and, thus the volume of the toner reserving portion could not be used effectively.